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THE BLACK KEYS No Rain, No Flowers
( Easy Eye / Warner)
Back to the drawing board after the disastrous rollout of their previous album( entitled Ohio Players), The Black Keys return with the slick and ultra-catchy follow-up, No Rain, No Flowers. While Ohio Players was a fun, albeit chaotic pastiche of hip hop, garage rock and pop complete with a large cast of supporting help( Beck, Noel Gallagher, Dan The Automator etc), the record failed to push the
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band to the next level of notoriety stalling on the charts and leaving the subsequent tour undersold and eventually cancelled. Drummer Pat Carney also went through a rough patch with his wife, musician Michelle Branch, marked by infidelity and other issues. In an effort to put all this behind them, the duo went directly back to the studio to work on No Rain, No Flowers, obviously a reference to using bad times to fuel something better. Let’ s just say that the stakes are high with this release. Building on the traces of pop music from their last album as a starting point, the boys collaborate with a committee of professional songwriters to refine their craft. There are many cases of rock bands trying this approach and failing mightily( like Weezer’ s light-weight Raditude album or the repugnant self-titled Liz Phair record), but The Black Keys have a way of turning these compositions into something completely recognizable as The Black Keys. Unlikely bedfellow Rick Nowels is brought in to helm a few tracks; the same guy who wrote“ Heaven Is A Place On Earth” for Belinda Carlisle and“ Ray Of Light” for Madonna gives the album opener and title track a seductively smooth, shuffling ambiance. Seventies Philly soul is a |
major touchstone here, and the king of early 2000s rap / pop production, Scott Storch( 50 Cent, The Game, Beyoncé), gives the party starter“ Babygirl” his trademark chunky keyboard lines. Storch then pulls in hitmaker Desmond Child( Aerosmith / Kiss / Bon Jovi) for“ Make You Mine,” which sounds like one of his massive hits, before the era of massive hits when pop music audiences fragmented into a thousand micro-genres. If they had added a gospel choir, it would have been a touch too much; as is, it’ s a great orchestraassisted ballad and one of the best Black Keys songs of the past ten years. It’ s fun hearing a band swing for the fences in an era where it almost seems gauche. The last rock & roll song to top the Billboard singles chart was Viva La Vida by Coldplay( applying the term rock & roll super loosely) over 17 years ago. Will The Black Keys be the next to do it? Most likely not, the marketplace is flooded daily with content, but it’ s still fun to hear a band trying.“ Man On A Mission” returns the band to their simple and loud blues roots and should satisfy their core fans. While the album lacks the visceral spontaneity of their early albums, it has a certain big-budget sterility; however, No Rain, No Flowers sounds like a band at an interesting crossroads. Appearing: 9 / 3 at Huntington Bank Pavilion, Chicago. 7
– Andy Derer
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THE CRANBERRIES No Need to Argue
30th Anniversary 2xLP( Island / UMe)
The Cranberries gained international success with their 1993 debut full-length album, Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’ t We?, and its singles“ Dreams” and“ Linger.” The Irish quartet’ s downcast but potent 1994 follow-up, No Need to Argue, crushed the sophomore jinx, eclipsing its predecessor’ s performance in the UK, North America, and most other territories. A 30th anniversary vinyl pressing is slightly delayed but is now available, featuring remastered audio by the original producer, Stephen Street. The album is best remembered for the melancholy backward glance toward a simpler time, when“ life was fun,” in“ Ode to My Family,” with its chiming arpeggios and“ doo doo-doo doo” singalong chorus, and the worldwide hit protest anthem“ Zombie.” Like U2’ s strident“ Sunday Bloody Sunday,” the politically charged“ Zombie” takes a critical view of the violent Troubles that were still current events in Northern Ireland at the time of the song’ s writing. In this case, the triggering 1993 event had spilled into England. The song is propelled by Mike Hogan’ s rumbling bass guitar pulse and taps into a Smashing Pumpkinsstyle grunge sound. Singer Dolores O’ Riordan’ s angry lyric ruminates on inno-
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